


Nothing More Than Feelings

by ellerkay



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Basically gen, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Gen, Reference to Torture, but the drug here is blood, ending is portentous for canon reasons, mention of canon Crowley/Lola, or more specifically emotion, so I guess oblique reference to canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 21:11:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20495399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellerkay/pseuds/ellerkay
Summary: A character study of Crowley and his emotions during his blood addiction and a little beyond.





	Nothing More Than Feelings

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Swan Song Bingo, Blood Junkie!Crowley square (season 9).
> 
> Title from the song "Feelings" by Morris Albert.

The thing about _feelings_ was that after so many decades, even the bad ones were good.

Crowley remembered what it was like to be human. Straining, struggling, starving. Starving was literal, sometimes, but even more than that he remembered the bottomless hunger that seemed to fill him almost all of the time. Hunger for affection, love, joy. Even when he got a scrap of one of those, it was hard to enjoy it when you were just afraid of it going away again. He’d thought life was essentially a misery and he might as well wring whatever fun he could get out of it. Hence the deal.

After he died, the fires of Hell devoured his emotion. He’d been glad of it. Oh, yes, the torture was a new kind of misery, an endless torment that broke and twisted him, just like it was supposed to. But it hurt less and less as time went on. In the end, he was left with a numbness that felt like peace. _Zero fucks to give,_ as the kids today said. It hadn’t been difficult at all to agree to take up torture himself. In a way, he felt like he was helping the souls that screamed under his knife. Eventually, they’d feel what he did: nothing at all. It would be a relief.

Demons could feel shadows of emotion: anger, fear, lust. It was almost like playacting. Crowley mostly felt ambitious, which was even better since it wasn’t really an emotion. He knew torture wasn’t the best use of his skills, so he quickly talked himself into a job as a crossroads demon. Eventually, he became King of the Crossroads. He was pretty content there. He liked sales and he was good at what he did.

And then came the Apocalypse, and his ascension to King of Hell, and the bloody fucking Winchesters.

The moose had opened a door in Crowley that had been shut so long, Crowley had practically forgotten it existed. Humanity. Sniveling, aching, longing _humanity_. It was awful and it was glorious. Even when it hurt, Crowley felt so alive, so vital. Even more so than when he’d actually been alive, maybe. He’d had no point of comparison, then. No long decades of blankness, his time filled with work and sex and climbing the hierarchy of Hell.

It lasted for a while. Crowley felt a truly shocking level of connection to the moose – Sam – this man who tried so hard to do good, whose blood and emotions were singing through Crowley’s veins. And then to Dean, who had spared his life. He wanted their friendship, their love.

He did his best to hide what he was going through, of course. He was still demon enough to know that showing weakness was the height of foolishness when his position wasn’t guaranteed. He postured and negotiated and teased the boys. But when they left him alone in the dark of their dungeon, Crowley felt loneliness and longing and even though it was alien and painful, he didn’t want it to go away.

When it started to, Crowley felt panicked. The dark cloud of numbness descending slowly was the worst thing he could imagine. He quickly came up with a way to stave it off. When he pressed the plunger on the needle in his arm and the prophet’s blood flooded his veins, he felt relief wash over him, sharp and real. Tears started in his eyes as he breathed out. Yes. _This._

After he was out of the Winchester’s dungeon, Crowley kept dosing himself, but sparingly. He knew he had to win the fight with Abaddon. Just get her out of the way and secure his position again. But it didn’t take long before he was chasing the high of emotion more and more often. He decided he deserved a break. Just a few days, holed up in a room with Lola. Then he’d work on finding the First Blade again.

A few days turned into a few weeks and then into a few months. It was ecstatic; crying at movies, at nothing; feeling emotions when he had sex. Lost in a haze of sentiment.

The Winchesters saved him and doomed him in doing so. More sober, he realized that no matter how much he cared for them, the boys would never trust him, never see him as human. Crowley was off the blood and he wouldn’t go back.

The numbness descended again. But as the weeks became months, Crowley found, to his surprise, that it didn’t overtake him entirely. There was a strange little corner in his mind that kept feeling things. Much of the time, he could ignore it. But it never went away. The blood, the emotions, the humanity of that time had changed him.

Crowley tried not to think about what that could mean for his future.


End file.
